Nephew and stepson of Sam Livesey.
Step-brother and double cousin of Barry Livesey and Jack Livesey. The Livesey family has a complicated structure. Brothers Joseph and Sam Livesey married the Edwards sisters. Sam married Margaret Ann in 1900 and Joseph married Mary Catherine in 1905. Sam and Margaret Ann had two sons, Jack (1901) and Barrie Livesey (1905). Joseph and Mary Catherine had two children, Roger (1906) and Maggie (1911). After Joseph died in 1911 and Margaret Ann died in 1913, Sam married Mary Catherine in 1913. They then brought up the children as one large family, having another child of their own, Stella in 1915. The family tree was further complicated when Roger Livesey married Ursula Jeans whose brother Desmond Jeans was already married to Roger's sister Maggie.
The British Ministry of Information would not let Laurence Olivier be cast in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), as it didn't want to bolster the production with an actor and star of Olivier's calibre as it felt the movie was critical of a type of British patriot and the war was on. Livesey was cast instead. A generation later he played Olivier's father Billy Rice in The Entertainer (1960), though he was less than a year older than him.